


lady of silences, calm and distressed

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: and will she remember me fifty years later? i wished i could save her in some sort of time machine [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era (Homestuck), Blood, Depersonalization, Depression, Derealization, Dissociation, Euthanasia, F/F, F/M, I swear to fuck half of these warnings have to do with dolofang, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mind Control, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 01:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: The thing about dying is that your life is supposed to flash before your eyes before you expire. But you have been dying slowly for so many sweeps - Kankri is dead, Mituna is worse than dead, Meulin is gone, and you are a slave to a highblood. You spend every day catering to her every whim, and following her instructions to the letter, even the instructions you’d prefer not to contemplate. Sometimes, when you need a break, you retreat into a world of memory, a world where you were less weary and hopeless, and pretend that that this existence is dynamic, as opposed to a static set of recollections. Your name is Porrim Maryam, and you have been waiting to die for a long time.





	lady of silences, calm and distressed

**Author's Note:**

> i borrowed the main title, and the titles of each part from T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday".  
> i believe that i've tagged all the potentially triggering things appropriately, so if any of the tags make you uncomfortable, don't read this.  
> if i neglected to tag something that should have been tagged, please drop me a line if you are able to. the last thing i'd want to do is trigger someone due to an oversight.
> 
> this is some really dark stuff, possibly one of the darkest things i've ever written. be careful.

_**i. the right time and the right place are not here** _

Your name is Porrim Maryam. You are a little under sixteen sweeps old. As a jadeblood, you are a steward of the caverns, an auxiliatrix, tasked with maintaining the mother grubs. Today is the seventh day of the fifteenth perigee of the two hundred fifty-second sweep of the current empress’s rule. 

Elder Onvali really needs to cut your hair. It’s growing out of its usual style.

You remind yourself of these somewhat unrelated things things to ground yourself. You recall the black and white facts, because that is the path of least resistance. Facts are devoid of emotion like melancholy or anxiety. You think that’s a good thing. Your inability to feel much more than exhaustion makes it hard for you tell, really.

Every day, whenever you have time free, you climb a stone wall so you can sit at the mouth of the cavern in which you work, and wait for your matesprit to return. She was making a pilgrimage to pray at the shrine of the First Mother Grub, the way all auxiliatrices do when they’re old enough, the way you will maybe a sweep and a half from now.

You wish you could stop worrying about her. But Viulex was supposed to be back - you count it on your fingers - nine days ago, and she’s not. You’d leave the caverns to go searching for her, but you wouldn’t know where to begin.

The other auxiliatrices discuss her disappearance, as they eat the awful food served in the nutrition block.

“Maybe she got kidnapped or something,” Apprentice Kisyuk says. “Or culled by drones.”

You shoot her a glare that could melt steel.

You have never liked Kisyuk Ostiyo in the slightest. You will never like her.

However, you’ll refrain from punching her in the face and breaking her nose. She’s not worth the kinetic energy, or the warnings you’d draw for such action.

Once you’re done being thoroughly pissed off, your knack for catastrophizing resurfaces.

What if Viulex abdicated for some reason? What if she abdicated and left you alone? Although you still have a kismesis you love (and hate) to pieces, you’d feel utterly off balance without Viulex.

You just want… you don’t know what you want.

But you know don’t want this.

You light incense in your room and pray to the First Mother that Viulex returns alive and unharmed. Then you curl up against one of the walls of your respiteblock and close your eyes.

You won’t cry.

You won’t cry, because you are an auxiliatrix, tasked with the honor of propagating the species, and you are not allowed to be weak.

You sigh, open your eyes, and climb into your recuperacoon. You changed the sopor in it earlier, so it’s nice and clean and comfortable.

You float and think things over. Maybe Viulex did abdicate.

_But why wouldn’t she take you with her? Why wouldn’t she take her moirail or kismesis with her? Did she think you’d all drop a caegar on her? Did she go on her pilgrimage with the intent of praying before the shrine, and subsequently decide to keep walking?_

You can’t say. Nobody can except her.

 _“I might have followed you, if you’d asked that of me,”_  you think.  _“I might have followed you anywhere, even to the other end of Alternia.”_

Another two days pass.

You do what you’re supposed to do, but there is no singing involved, the way there usually is. You love to sing, but you can’t muster up the joy for it right now. You listlessly wash the grubs off as they come and put them in their temporary recuperacoons, while the other auxiliatrices talk shit about whoever isn’t in earshot. Normally, you participate in this gossip, but you don’t feel like speaking tonight, except to say “Yes, Elder” and “I’ll get to it”.

Your kismesis confronts you during your lunch of lukewarm grubloaf, and puts a gentle hand on your shoulder, a downright pale gesture. Nobody says anything, though, likely because they’re busy forcing down their own portions of grubloaf to pay you much attention.

Apprentice Sosyaa says it tastes somewhat better with grubsauce, but as far as you can tell, grubsauce is basically grubloaf with a different consistency, and salt added to it. Whatever. You attempt to eat it anyway.

Odrena takes the seat next to you. You’re trying to eat the vegetables around the grubloaf, so you don’t want to be distracted from this delicate operation.

“Being miserable isn’t going to bring Viulex here, Porrim,” she says, blunt as always. “And it’s not going to make you useful in the caverns.”

You give her a rough shove. so rough that she nearly falls out of her seat. You should be sorry, and part of you is sorry, but not enough to apologize.

“I hate you, you know,” you tell her.

“I’m aware. For what it’s worth, I despise you more than you can imagine,” she says. “Still, I care about you. And like I said. Moping isn’t going to bring anyone back. You think if you cry hard enough for her, she’ll spontaneously return? That’s not how it works.”

You wish your plate were made of something heavier than cardboard, so you could chuck it at her face. All the trolls in her quadrants are safe, and she wants to lecture you? You don’t have time for this.

“Leave me alone, okay?” you say. “Come back later. Right now, I just want to think.”

She sighs, looking as if she wants to say something more, or maybe even slap you, but doesn’t.

“Whatever, Porrim,” she tells you, right before she takes her leave.

Annoying as it is to admit it, she’s right. You’re off your game. Your mind is someplace else entirely.

It doesn’t help that you’re highly sleep deprived. Every morning and afternoon, when you’re supposed to be asleep, you sit at the mouth of a cavern and hope that you’ll see Viulex returning.

But only thing that comes through the cavern entrance are bugs and small animals. You pretend this hurts less than it does.

Another week later later, you’re keeping your usual routine of waiting each morning, but it’s half-hearted now.

You’re beginning to doubt that you’ll ever see Viulex again. You imagine her laughter ringing in your ears, the feel of her body pressed up against yours, the way she tilts her head toward you when the two of you are floating in your recuperacoon. It’s a tight fit - the both of you are only a few sweeps shy of twenty - but you made it work.

At this point, you only really sit here so you can cry in solitude. Curl up small like a pillbug and act like you don’t exist.

Finally, one morning, your vigilance pays off.

Someone stumbles into the cavern, auxiliatrix uniform looking a little worse for the wear, but otherwise unharmed.

You’d recognize that figure anywhere. The short curvy young woman with the stubbornly curly hair that frames her face like a halo, and is is almost impossible to cut into the proper auxiliatrix bob. That, and the rings through her nose and left eyebrow.

You mouth the word “Viulex”, shocked and lost for words.

You could kiss her. You want to kiss her senseless.

But you don’t. You refrain. You’re scared that she’s a hallucination of some sort. Doesn’t that happen if you don’t sleep for an extended period of time?

Might as well keep the charade going for as long as you can. You’re not ready to let go yet.

Instead, Viulex is the one who kisses you. Not on the mouth at first. She kisses your cheeks, where your tears have no doubt made verdant tracks down your face. Then, she kisses you on the mouth.

She’s real, warm, and genuinely present. You gaze up at the cavern ceiling and thank the First Mother.

Then, you embrace her as tightly as you can, inhaling the smell of shrine incense and sweat.

“You’re alive,” you breathe.

“Yeah, despite the surface’s best efforts.”

You’re not sure you want to know what happened. You ask anyway.

“Oh?”

Apparently, after she was done praying at the shrine of the First Mother, she attempted to take a shortcut back to the caverns, got chased by cholerabears, ran straight into two subjugglators who felt like giving her a hard time. Subjugglators aren't legally allowed to cull auxiliatrices - except under specific circumstances- but that doesn't stop them from taking a swing every now and then. So Viulex escaped before they could rough her up, and ended up taking the long way back to the caverns.

Then, she got lost. But she found her way back, so no harm no foul.

The alarm on your face must show, since she’s quick to add, “I’m here now, Porrim, so don’t worry.”

You don’t see how you couldn’t.

* * *

**_ii. the second turning of the second stair_ **

In her arms, she carries a few paper bags, no doubt containing contraband material from the surface. Chocolate for the few wigglers who are both old enough to eat it, and who haven’t been tapped to undergo the trials yet, and spices to make grubloaf taste less like grubloaf. You doubt the second thing is even possible, not unless she has some heretofore unknown talent in alchemy.

Viulex has a note for you as well, one that has been folded carefully into the shape of a flower. On one of the sides it says  _“open me”._

Once she’s given it to you, you unfold it. You feel bad about destroying such a lovely object, but nevertheless…

 _“Meet at your quarters in five hours?”_ the message reads.

You smile and nod at her to show that you understand.

You already know what’s going to happen, even if the both of you could get in huge trouble for it.

Aside from the auxiliatrices who get chosen to fill pails in order to maintain the population of jadebloods, it is not for an auxiliatrix to have quadrants, save the pale one.

No pitch, no red. Too dangerous. Too distracting from one’s duties. And no ashen quadrant either. Nearly all of you will live and die in here. Since kismessitude is discouraged, who needs an auspistice? 

If two auxiliatrices are discovered to have banned quadrants, the offending trolls have one of two choices: break off their relationship, or get exiled.

That said, practically every troll in the caverns breaks the rules, yourself included. Not even the Grand Elders can be bothered to give a damn. They were young once too.

Counting down the hours until you return to your quarters, you find your voice and sing to the newborn grubs for the first time in more than a week. It’s a soft little song in Vindemiatrix. The sound even makes a few auxiliatrices stop to listen.

They’ve told you that you have a beautiful voice, and a useful one.

It’s good for the with difficult cases, with the grubs who scuttle so far up the cavern walls that nobody can pick them up and put them back where they belong. You sing to them until they relax and crawl back down.

Around seven sweeps ago, you hatched a such grub with the oddest eyes. Not odd enough to cull him for abnormality, though.

Aforementioned grub had psionics and zapped you a few times when you tried to calm him down. You did calm him down, and then he hit you with psionics again for no good reason. You didn’t know grubs could have a laugh at your expense, but this one certainly could. And did.

Here, now, you see another auxiliatrix give a grub with one horn a shot of anesthetic, and you turn your face slightly away. You know what’s about to happen.

Still, as much as you want to look elsewhere when someone else does this, you try not to balk at doing your Important Duty when it’s your turn, even if your Important Duty makes you want to vomit sometimes.

When you get certain grubs, those who are too malformed to live more than a few hours, those that would be too weak to survive the trials, and those with off-spectrum blood colors, you do what you have to.

You perform the actions as if they were the steps to a dance you’ve always known. You’re sixteen now, and you’ve been doing this since you were seven.

A careful shot of anesthetic to knock them out. Then, a paralytic to slow their breathing to almost nothing. Last, a potassium salt to stop their bloodpusher. Finally, if there’s time, you sit there and watch them die, saying prayers to the Mother, and begging her to show them the mercy you wish Alternia could have, that you could have, but didn’t.

You like singing grubs to sleep, but every time you have to cull one for something minor, something non-life-threatening, your heart aches. Sometimes, you think of leaving. You thought about it quite a bit while Viulex was missing. Then, she came back.

There went your idea.

Later, some apprentice accidentally miscalculates the amount of thanatos cocktail to give to her two-headed grub.

The poor thing screeches like it’s been set aflame, writhing in agony. And the terrifying sound doesn’t stop until Elder Onvali dashes over, hits the grub with the proper amount of anesthetic, and administers the cocktail herself.

A few hours later, Elder Onvali’s still punishing the apprentice, along with her mentor. Well, mostly the latter, because if her mentor had been doing her job, she would have realized the calculations were off. And the apprentice is only seven sweeps old, the youngest an apprentice can be.

“We cull mutant grubs as painlessly as possible, and to that end, we ensure our dose calculations are precise. We do not subject these grubs to cruel and unusual punishment,” she says to Sildou, fury barely concealed beneath her veneer of calm. “If you want to mete out cruel and unusual punishment, ask the First Mother to make you a subjugglator in your next life.”

Grand Elder Syrrma allows Zaniah to continue as an apprentice, but strips Sildou of her title until such point that she can prove that she is responsible enough to be an Elder again.

That said, regardless of what punishment those trolls receive, that agonized screeching is going to haunt your daymares for a while.

When you get back to your respiteblock, way down in the cavern’s depths, Viulex is waiting for you right outside. You really hope she’s okay with just lying around and talking. You’re not up for much more than that any more.

She kisses your hand, and for whatever reason, it makes you blush. Maybe because you haven’t seen her in more than a perigee.

“I have something else for you,” she says.

She pulls something out of her sylladex, and hands it to you. It’s a somewhat wilted flower, with an uncountable number of bright yellow petals, and a large dark circle at its center. You’ve never seen anything like it.

“It’s a sunflower,” she explains. “It reminded me of you. And it looked way better when I first found it.”

“It certainly makes the place brighter,” you reply. You wish you had something to put it in.

You smile, and accept the gift, thanking her all the while. You open the door to your quarters, and beckon her in.

You two remove your clothing, because although you’re not particularly intent on pailing today, your standard-issue tunics are scratchy as burlap. If you had it your way, you’d walk around the caverns completely naked.

Viulex takes a seat on the floor, and blows an errant lock of hair out of her face. You lie down next to where she’s sitting, and put your head in her lap.

“Dunno if I’m up for any fun anymore,” she says. “I mean, I wanted to earlier, but do you know what a fucking hike it is to this cavern? I don’t want to move again for the next ten sweeps.”

“Ten sweeps is a long time,” you point out. “How will you eat?”

“I’ll photosynthesize.”

“I think you need proper light for that. And you’d also need to be a plant, or something of the sort.”

“Maybe I’ll be a plant in my next life,” she muses.

“What kind of plant would you be?”

“A carnation, maybe?”

You don’t know what a carnation is, so you’ll take her word for it. 

She pokes you so you get your head out of her lap, because her feet are falling asleep. Then, she lies down on the floor, and does a few stretches, wincing occasionally.

You lie down next to her, flat on your stomach.

She’s thinking, although you’re not sure what. Normally, you can almost read her mind, because her face is so expressive, and because you’ve been matesprits for ages, but not today.

“Caegar for your thoughts?” you ask.

She touches your face.

“I’ve keep thinking about the world above,” she says.

You don’t know whether she’s telling you this so you’ll either agree or disagree with her thoughts and make some of the decision for her. You decide on a neutral response.

“I see.”

“Do you know how bright it is there? All the time?”

You shake your head, because no, you don’t.

“And so many trolls all over the place,” she continues. “I didn’t see all these trolls at the shrine, mind you. I saw them while I was at a market. But you get what I’m saying.”

You don’t, so you just nod. That seems like the wisest course of action.

“And I saw stars. They’re these little white dots in the sky. I knew you could see a few of them from the cavern entrance, but I had no idea there were so many outside,” she says. “They’re like… infinity.”

She must catch onto the fact that you’re not following her, because she rolls her eyes at you. 

She flicks you on the forehead and tells you that you’re awful at pretending to listen. Still, she turns on her side, and kisses you again. You interlace one of your hands with hers. She trills and chirps, more relaxed than she was before.

“Flushed for you,” Viulex murmurs, her eyes beginning to close. You form a little heart with your hands, and she grins.

You trace a gentle finger down and across the geometric patterns, the squares, pentagons, and hexagons of her tattoos, the same way she sometimes does to your swirling ones, when she’s bent over you in the low light of her quarters. She gives the ring through your lip an affectionate tug.

Maybe you should get her into a recuperacoon before she passes out on the floor.

Then she opens her eyes and rouses herself back to attention.

She doesn’t look calm anymore. In fact, she looks… nervous?

* * *

**_iii. if the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent_ **

“I have a question for you, Porrim,” she says, in a clear but hesitant tone. “I almost forgot, but it’s important.”

“Yes?”

You really hope she doesn’t want to break up with you. You don’t know why she would. Maybe she met someone while she was gone?

Viulex props her head up with one hand, and seems to consider her words carefully before she speaks.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“When have I not kept your secrets?” you ask.

“Good point.”

“So what’s the big secret?”

“I’m thinking of leaving. Permanently,” she says. “Well, more than thinking.”

“To where?” you ask, even though you already know.

Figures. She comes back for a day, and now she’s ready to leave again. Chasing Viulex is like chasing a butterfly. Oh sure, you can capture it eventually, if you have some great windfall of patience, but you might injure it in the process.

So you let her flit in and out of your life. She rarely leaves the caverns, but she’s loath to stay in one place. You prefer this arrangement, this low-maintenance matespritship.

You pity her, that cannot be denied, but it’s not as if your relationship is allowed in these caverns either way. Better that you two not spend too much time around each other. Although they don’t really seem to care, the Grand Elders might get ideas, and you are not eager to test that hypothesis.

“I want to go outside, again,” she says, her eyes alight with wonder at the thought of it. “I want to count all the stars in the sky. I want to see more trees. I want to see each one. I want to go to the markets and buy everything they have.”

“Is that all?” you ask archly.

She aims a halfassed kick at you.

Still, Viulex’s exuberance drops a notch. Standing close enough to kiss you, she murmurs, “I’m tired of culling grubs and looking at nothing but auxiliatrices and rocks. Day in, day out.”

(“You never seem to get tired of looking at me,” you think.)

“I see,” you respond aloud. “I hope you like it up there, then. I surely do.”

You stand there and wait for the axe to fall, for the moment she says that you and she are not going to work out.

Viulex doesn’t move away, though.  

She takes your chin, tilts your head up, and gazes at you. She takes both of your hands in hers. You push some of her hair away from her face, and she leans into the touch of your fingers.

“I want you to come with me,” she says, resting her forehead against yours.

“Above?”

She nods.

“I’m not old enough to go on pilgrimage to the shrine,” you point out. “And you’ve already gone. So how would this even work, practically? How would we explain our absences?”

“I have an idea,” Viulex says.

“What is it?”

She inhales slowly, turning her words over and over in her head before she actually speaks.

“We tell the Grand Elders what we are to each other, and get exiled for being in the red quadrant,” she says. “That’s only if you want to go, though. I don’t want you to do something just to make me happy.”

You really adore this troll sometimes. Most of the time, actually. But that… that’s a pretty ridiculous idea. If anyone else had said it, you might have laughed.

“As flushed as I am for you, I think I’ll stay here,” you say.

Viulex looks momentarily sad, but she’s quick to recover.

“Guess I’m staying too,” she says.

“Don’t stay on my account.”

You don’t want to make her miserable because of your hesitance.

Viulex shrugs.

“While I was outside, I saw so many wondrous things. And I kept thinking ‘Oh, Porrim would adore this fabric’, or ‘this sunset would make her smile’, ‘or she’d yell at me for doing this,’” she says. “It all kept coming back to you, you and my moirail. I don’t want to leave without either of you.”

She lies there staring at the ceiling, her eyes bright, as she remembers what she’s seen.

“Tell me everything,” you say. You know she wants to. She obliges.

You wish you could always feel this light and content, just listening to the sound of her voice, the way it skips up the register of enthusiasm.

* * *

**_iv. o my people what have i done_ **

Work is mildly boring as always.

Perigees fly by in a gray sort of monotony, punctuated occasionally by clandestine trysts, arguments in the nutrition block, Elders admonishing apprentices, and grubs who like to sit on your head while you sing to other grubs. Maybe your head is comfortable. Who knows?

Two days after you turn seventeen, you undergo one of the most important ceremonies an apprentice can face, on the same level as the tattoos you got when you were thirteen, and the piercings you got when you were seven.

Beforehand, Elder Onvali, your mentor, cuts your hair into the auxiliatrix bob once more, since it’s grown out just a bit.

Then, the two of you stand on a platform, being watched by more trolls than you can easily count. While you’re focused on not fainting, she has you recite the Thirteen Duties of an Auxiliatrix.

“The first duty of an auxiliatrix is to protect the mother grubs, and any troll grubs that result, by any means necessary,” you say, trying to sound confident.

“The second duty of an auxiliatrix is to help trolls in need of assistance, unless doing so would conflict with the first rule.”

“The third duty of an auxiliatrix is to honor the First Mother, in word and deed.”

You go on, until you’ve finished all thirteen.

Score one for you, you didn’t pass out.

Elder Onvali beckons you forward. You kneel to her. She takes out a pair of carefully decorated scissors, the handle and finger holes adorned with swirling green runes. She gives them to you.

“Rise, Elder Porrim,” she says. “You are no longer an apprentice. Treat these with the reverence they require.”

You thought you’d feel different after this, and you do, but not by much. 

Still, you can now take on your own apprentice, and cut her hair into the proper style. That’s the point of having the scissors. You just hope you don’t mess it up. All the trolls in the caverns keep their hair short out of tradition, but also so belligerent grubs and wigglers cannot grab hold and yank on it.

You choose a seven sweeps old named Iriort as an apprentice, and try to teach her everything you know.

While Grand Elder Syrrma gives Iriort the set of gold facial piercings that all cavern jades receive when they become official apprentice auxiliatrices, Iriort squeezes your hand, until it blanches almost white, the whole time.

You can remember picking out and receiving your piercings ten sweeps ago. And First Mother, it was incredibly uncomfortable, even if your face throbbed with pride and triumph later.

You don't even think getting your tattoos caused as much discomfort as getting the piercings. You tell Iriort this, that the worst is over in terms of body modification, and then she has a question for you.

"Why do you have to wait until you turn thirteen to get your tattoos?" she asks, trying not to move her face too much.

"To represent the Thirteen Duties of An Auxiliatrix."

She nods.

"Makes sense."

You ruffle Iriort's hair, sensing that she's still in some pain.

"Your face will feel uncomfortable for a while, but as long as you're meticulous about keeping everything clean, you'll be fine."

"Yes, Elder Porrim."

You smile at her.

Over the next sweep, you teach Iriort as much as you can, which is quite a bit - she’s a fast learner - and you would teach her even more, if not for a certain event.

* * *

_**v. and the light shone in darkness** _

The event in question involves an off-spectrum grub that you cannot cull, no matter how much you try to convince yourself to do it. You hide him behind your recuperacoon for several perigees, whenever you’re not in your quarters. When you are, you lower him into your recuperacoon, before you get in.

Odrena rolls her eyes the first time she sees the grub.

“Porrim, this is the worst idea you’ve ever had. What are you even going to do with it?”

Viulex agrees with her, a rare occurrence that happens only once every seven hundred sweeps.

You raise an eyebrow.

“He’s a him, not an it. His name is Kankri Vantas.”

“Great, you’ve named it and everything,” Odrena says, shaking her head.

“That grub is going to be the death of you,” Viulex says.

Since you can’t bring yourself to follow the rules, you choose to exile yourself, under the guise of going to pray before the shrine of the First Mother. You’re the right age for that, anyway. Most jadebloods make the journey sometime between their seventeenth and twenty-first sweep.

As you get ready to abdicate, you ask Viulex if she wants to come with you.

You can finally be free. Okay, not  _free_ free, considering Alternia is run by a sadist, at least that's what Odrena says. Up above, there could be subjugglators, archeradictators, and ruffiannhilators pretty much everywhere you turn, but… you can’t stay in this cavern anymore. Not if it means you have to cull Kankri.

Besides, exiled auxiliatrices tend to be in high demand in medical centers. With their expansive knowledge of troll anatomy, they assist medicullers.

Viulex considers your offer for a while, but ultimately decides against it. She doesn’t want to leave the other troll in her quadrants behind, and since her moirail didn't want to leave the first time, she probably won’t want to leave now.

You understand.

You can’t win in this lifetime. When she wanted to leave, you didn’t. Now, you’re ready to leave, and she wants to stay.

You tell her not to wait for you, that there are other trolls besides you. You won’t be back for a long time, if you ever return at all.

“I waited eleven and a half sweeps to find someone like you,” she replies. “I think I can wait another eleven.”

That’s right. If you’ve been together for six sweeps, and you’re seventeen now, you got together when you were only… damn, you two are getting old.

 _What if she has to wait for more than eleven sweeps?_  you think to yourself.

She has a few more words for you, before you leave her quarters to finish packing.

“May the First Mother watch over you and Kankri,” she says. That’s the first time she’s called him by his name, as opposed to “that grub.”

* * *

**_vi. will the veiled sister pray for children at the gate?_ **

Elder Onvali doesn’t seem to be perturbed by the fact you’re leaving, even though you didn’t give adequate notice. Oh sure, you told everyone you were going on your pilgrimage to the shrine, but Onvali’s more perceptive than most where you’re concerned. She was your mentor, after all.

She packs extra provisions for you, to go with the ones you already have. She writes down a name on a slip of paper - Onzuli Ikzion.

“She’s an exiled jade. She works at the shrine. She’ll find somewhere safe for you to go after you get there.”

Climbing up to the mouth of the cavern is a pain on a good day. Climbing the the stone walls while wearing formal auxiliatrix regalia - you have to, lest you blow your cover - and using your cape as a makeshift sling for your grub, well, that’s a new level of awful.

Once you reach the surface of Alternia proper, Kankri interrupts your exclamation of joy by drooling on your shoulder.

You kiss him right between his eyes, which he closes for a moment, content. You wipe the drool off your shoulder, reflecting that at least he doesn’t bite yet.

You find Onzuli and she lets you stay in the shrine temple for half a sweep, before finding you a part time job in a medical center. She then gives you the address of someone else who would offer you houseroom.

You spend the next few sweeps more moving from place to place, never staying anywhere too long. You use so many aliases that you begin to forget them all.

In retrospect, when you look back on the time you spent running, you realize that while Alternia is a cutthroat place, there are always small mercies if you bother to look.

Trolls offering to let you stay at their hives for a few weeks, or insisting on giving you bread or whatever else they have, often in exchange for medical assistance, but also out of kindness and with no expectation of repayment.

When Kankri gets older, when he starts preaching about a world of mercy, and something analogous to hemoequality, you almost believe that it’s possible. He sees this place in dreams. A world without culling drones. A world without highbloods brandishing blasters and clubs against whomever they please. A world with a kind empress who genuinely cares for her subjects. The first time he did - when he was three - and went on babbling to you about it, you thought he’d taken ill and were terrified because you had no idea what temperature constituted febrile for a mutant grub.

After the sixth time you heard him talk about this place, you just sat there and attempted to listen.

You wish you could see it the way he can. It sounds lovely.

Kankri keeps speaking about this place, about nonviolence - unless violence is necessary in self defense, and about hemoequality. He attracts more and more trolls, as he goes along and you worry all the while.

You end up with two more who decide to follow Kankri in light of his ideology. It takes a while, but you ultimately deem them trustworthy. The first, a crass psionic yellowblood, either pisses you off or makes you laugh in turns. Sometimes both at the same time.

The second, a deaf girl around Kankri’s age, well, she was originally going to be culled by subjugglators, in the name of the Mirthful Messiahs, and then she made a run for it. For whatever reason, the Grand Highblood let her continue running without sending one of his minions to pursue her.

You’re surprised for a moment thaqt she didn’t get culled in the caverns. Thankfully, someone either forgot about her disability or felt sorry for her.

You don’t know Alternian Sign Language, but Mituna does. That’s how you find out her story. Mituna translates.

“It was part of my instructor training in Sigma Block,” he explains later. His eyes darken by a degree. He doesn’t like talking about those days, lest he get homesick. “So I know enough to get by.”

* * *

_**vii. hour and hour, word and word, power and power** _

More sweeps pass.

Preaching about liberation from fragile, violent, and unsustainable systems is getting more and more dangerous. You try to inform Kankri of this fact, but he’s stubborn. He’s always been stubborn. He’d rather die in a revolt than live with the knowledge that he could have done more.

Kankri’s latest speech causes something of a lowblood uprising, to the point where highbloods randomly search hives for all of you. So you bring him, Meulin, and Mituna to the safest place you can think of - the caverns.

It’s the safest place to hide from the authorities. Most trolls wouldn’t set foot in a cavern full of auxiliatrices for a million caegars. A single auxiliatrix can beat down two or three highbloods, never mind a few hundred, all of whom would be intent on protecting their sacred grounds.

Much to your sadness, you find out Viulex actually waited for you for all those sweeps, never taking a matesprit. You inform her that you didn’t quite wait for her, that you had a fling or two, and she tells you that it’s fine. Things happen.

Still, she and Mituna eye each other warily, like they’re having a glaring contest. Eventually, it ends in a draw.

Your quadrants confuse the shit out of you whenever you contemplate them too hard.

Viulex adores Kankri, though.

Your first language was the language of the caverns, Vindemiatrix. And since that was your first language, the one you spoke more far more often than Common Alternian, it became his first language. He greets Viulex in the jade tongue, proceeds to have the most animated conversation with her, and she smiles, ruffling his hair.

Meulin can’t hear or speak as well as she’d like to, but she can write things on flat surfaces in order to communicate easily enough. She’s always curious about everything, and unfailingly polite when she isn't swearing, so Viulex likes her as well. She teaches her how to feed grubs. It’s not particularly difficult, not until their teeth come in.

You four even restore and take to the sea on a boat some seadwellers - who were already hiding you - helped you acquire and make functional. This after you helped treat one of their number

You rather like your houseboat, even if letting Mituna, Kankri, and Meulin name it was a bit of a mistake. The First Ship. It's so awful that it's hysterical.

But all good things come to an end at some point.

And they do, while your quartet is hiding in a temple to the First Mother, a few sweeps later.

* * *

**_viii. and i who am here dissembled_ **

The other shoe drops.

Ten auxiliatrices, who tried to hold back the subjugglators to buy your group time to run, are slaughtered in front of you.

Your son dies.

Meulin disappears.

Mituna becomes a sapient battery.

You become a slave.

In your holding cell, as the powers that be figure out what to do with you, you bash your head against the stone walls repeatedly, in an attempt to self-cull.

You manage to knock yourself unconscious, and when you awaken, you’re in restraints.

You scream for Kankri until they sedate you.

After several perigees of being trapped here, your memories of your old life have become diaphanous. Those days seem far away and dim, secondhand memories relayed to you by someone else, distorted in transit.

You decide to do some more screaming. It’s not like you have much else to do. At least if they sedate you, you won’t have to think. 

They sedate you again. Finally.

After you’re fully awake, you’re in some darkened slow-moving vehicle with nine other shackled trolls. On your way to wherever you’ll be staying, your shackles rattling whenever the vehicle hits a bump, you start to doze. You’d like to sleep for a long time.

When you come back to yourself, with the man driving yanks you out of the vehicle and shoves you forward so hard that you fall flat on the ground. When you rise to a sitting position, in front of a magnificent ship, a cobaltblood woman standing at the dock to meet you.

Later, she removes your shackles, decrying how ugly they are, and informs you that she is your owner now. Maybe she’ll be kind? You’re not holding your breath.

(You wish they had just culled you. That’s probably why they didn’t.)

You keep your eyes lowered in resignation, as the blueblood with the ruthless, probing eyes examines every inch of you.

“She’ll do,” she tells the driver, handing over a small bag of coins as payment.

At that moment, you think two things. First, that you’d offer all the caegars in your sylladex to whoever succeeds in mercy culling you. Second, you note that there are moments in your life during which you wish you could have stopped time and lived there forever. Pretty much anywhere but the last quarter-sweep.

A few pergiees later, you finally have the time and the opportunity to check your reflection in a broken shard of mirrored glass. There are other things you could do with this sharp object, final, permanent things, but something in your pan forces you to drop it before you can give more than a passing thought to self-culling.

Your hair has grown obscenely long, an affront to the First Mother, but you are no longer an auxiliatrix, so what does it matter? You still have your tattoos and some of your facial jewelry, but these adornments do not an auxiliatrix make.

You blink away tears.

With a massive effort, despite an azure fog seeping into your thinkpan, one you’d later learn was your owner’s doing, you manage to recall a few of your more pleasant memories.

* * *

**_ix. here are the years that walk between_ **

_Flash back to…_

The moment Kankri takes his few wobbling steps toward you, his cheeks chubby and candy-red. The subsequent moment where he vomits all over your tunic. Okay, so, you could do without that memory.

The evening Meulin finally trusts you enough to let you braid her hair without hissing. You untangle the knots with deft hands, even though it takes six hours. She thanks you afterwards, goes hunting, and brings back a deer. If you ever have to eat venison again, you’ll kill someone.

The first time you and Mituna talk about everything and everyone you’ve left behind, and he understands. He understands the way the others cannot. Kankri has only known a life spent traveling constantly from one place to the next, not spending enough time anywhere to put down roots. And later, when Meulin joins your little group, she also has never really stayed anywhere for long.

But you and Mituna? You had actual lives before this. You had quadrantmates before this. You two sleep next to each other, even when you haven’t been pailing. It’s nice to have someone who gets it. It’s nice to not feel alone, to fall asleep telling each other stories about your respective lives.

You tell him about the caverns, about how you and (occasionally) your kismesis would sing to newborn grubs. In turn he tells you about Sigma Block, and all the times he escaped the psionic compound to bring back actual food for his friends.

“I wonder if they’re safe,” Mituna muses. His foot does that tap-tap-tap thing it always does when he was thinking. “Everyone I knew from the compound.”

“I wonder the same thing about my friends,” you reply. “I don’t regret leaving, but nevertheless…”

“Can’t change the past, though, can we?” he asks.

You nod, thoughtfully.

If you think back far enough, to your thirteenth wriggling day, you can recall the day Sielya, Viulex, and Amriyu make you a dinner that is not lukewarm grubloaf. It’s the greatest gift you’ve received up to that point.

Flash forward one sweep from that moment.

You think of Viulex leading you to her quarters, and telling her roommates to get lost and play cards for the next five hours. When they see you, one of them declares that they don’t want to know what’s about to go down, and leads her friends after her.

* * *

**_x. one who moves in the time between sleep and waking_ **

As you start to doze off in your quarters, you can almost feel Viulex’s or Odrena’s mouth on yours, warm and wanting, and your fists balled in her tunic, trying to yank her impossibly closer. Even if it’s just a memory, it’s what you have.

Viulex peels your tunic off you carefully, but it gets caught in your horns, and by time you get it off, there’s a hole in it. Just great, now you have to requisition another one from the drones. The air is positively freezing. But you don’t have much time to reflect on the momentary shock of cold. Her fingers circle your nook, causing you to whine, but they stop short of the stimulation you’d need to come. You could kick her for that one, if you weren’t enjoying it.

You lose track of time whenever you pail Viulex or Odrena. It could be minutes. It could be hours. You’re glad either way.

Odrena’s quite different from Viulex, though. All cruel smirks, sharp claws, and backhanded compliments. You give as good as you get, though, even if you damage some furniture in the process. That said, you two are always so meticulous with aftercare that you’re surprised you never flipped fully pale for each other.

Move forward from that memory, and you remember the rippling translucent cape of Odrena’s green and black formal uniform as she walks toward the Grand Elders, her facial features serious and nearly unmoving. The stud through her philtrum and the series of rings through her ear cartilage glinting in the light she gives off.

Odrena's expression only changes when Syrrma has her recite the Thirteen Duties of the Auxiliatrix, and that’s because she  _has_  to speak. When Grand Elder Syrrma awards her the title of Elder, she thanks her repeatedly, hands folded.

After that’s finished, she sways with vertigo, finds her seat, and slumps down into it.

You figure that you’re fucked when it’s your turn to become an Elder, because you might actually faint on the spot from seeing so many trolls in one place.

In Odrena’s quarters, you make tea for her, because it'll calm her. You sort of want to put cayenne pepper in it as a joke, but you don’t. She’s been through enough today.

You let the tea steep for a bit, then pour some into a cup.

“I could barely open my mouth ‘cause I was nervous. I thought I was going to vomit or something,” Odrena says, while she sips from her tea. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Or, it could be that you ate grubloaf that had been sitting out for almost two days,” you point out. “Maybe you’re an idiot, but it’s not because you were anxious. It’s because you ate the grubloaf.”

“I hate you, Porrim.”

“I believe that you have expressed this sentiment before.”

You two sit around in relative silence until Odrena asks you a question.

“How awful did I look during the ceremony?”

“Constipated,” you say honestly.

Odrena socks you in the arm and asks why you couldn’t just lie to her. You add, “But you recited the Thirteen Duties without hesitating or stumbling over your words. That must count for something.”

“You’ll probably do it better than me when your time comes,” she says.

“Oh, I definitely will.”

“Modest as always, I see,” Odrena says.

She tugs you sharply forward by your collar, knocking over your teacup, which comes to a tinkle-smash on the floor. Does she have any idea how many caegars that cost you, not counting the bribe money you paid a nineteen sweeps old to bring it back in the first place?

Dear fuck, you hate her. You and she are nose to nose.

“Pitch for you,” Odrena says, her breath warm on your face.

“Pitch as coal.”

To celebrate the fact that she survived her ceremony, you and she have some wine, and curse each other out (business as usual), covering each other in scratches, saying pitch black things you only halfway mean, viciously pointing out each other’s weaknesses. This, so you can face them.

She pulls you down for another kiss.

A quicksilver current skips through your abdomen, arousal mixed in with contempt. Then you pail in her recuperacoon. Bad idea. Sopor slime and slurry do not mix even slightly. Learn something new every night.

But these are only dreams. Dreams and memories, now. You can never go back.

* * *

**_xi. the place of solitude where three dreams cross_ **

As a prisoner on this overcompensatory pirate ship, you try not to think too much about Mituna and Meulin. Either Meulin is safe, or she isn’t. She got away. Hopefully she’ll stay that way.

Mituna? Well… Whenever you think that your life is awful, you think about his fate. You wish you could cull him from here.

You try not to think about Kankri, because whenever you do, all you want to do is lay down and die. You couldn’t shield him from his fate. You couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t protect him.

Your wiggler. Your bright, vivacious wiggler, a pacifist and a visionary of the first degree. You almost took his stories about this gentle world as truth, but after what happened to him, you can’t find it within yourself to believe anymore. Hemoequality is preposterous. It will never happen. Mercy is a crock, a pause between one indignity and another.

* * *

**_xii. and neither division nor unity matters_ **

The final time you’re close enough to Kankri to touch him, it’s maybe five minutes before they drag him up to the flogging jut. Before they lead him away, he gives you an anxious half smile, saying something you must have told him a billion times across his sixteen sweeps of life.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

For a moment, you see the nervous wiggler he used to be. Taking his first steps (and falling over), babbling nonsense (you don’t think he ever figured out how to stop talking), and calling you Mama. Before his eyes went aflame with the thought of dismantling the system, back when you could keep him safe, back when he actually listened when you told him to be careful.

Then, they take a set of irons, heat them up, and clamp them around his wrists.

It takes a second for the agony to start. While his wrists and hands burn up, they start to flog him, the whip making a sickening crack against his back. 

“That’s my son!” you think. “He's never hurt anyone!“

His torture goes on for a while, until his back is a mess of bloody lines. 

He screams himself hoarse the entire time. 

As she watches, Meulin shrieks along with him, a sound that makes all the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You stare at her and shake your head, too full of sorrow to look her in the eye.

Mituna rocks back and forth, shouting incoherence, eyes sparking like he’d like to do something, but he can’t. They’ve put a collar on him to keep him from annihilating everyone. He forms words with his lips that he cannot articulate aloud.

You fall to your knees, sobbing, shouting for your son. You wish it were you at the flogging jut. It would hurt, no doubt. Excruciating pain. But Kankri wouldn’t have to face this fate. And that would make the suffering and anguish worth it.

Then, you hear Kankri speak. His final sermon, so incensed, so despondent, so bereft of hope, so heavily laced with vitriol, so full of rage. And he keeps going, even when his words become more and more incomprehensible.

“Kankri!” you yell.

You try to dash toward him, but several trolls restrain you. You could cull them all. You would cull them all, but you worry that such action might make things worse for Meulin, and Mituna.

(Go back twelve and a half sweeps, to an evening where you two were hiding in a forest. Kankri saw some kind of feline thrice his size, mistook it for a very large meowbeast and tried to befriend it. Only Kankri.

When it growled at him - and you could hear it growling from where you were - he ran, screaming for you. You, who told him to stay in one spot while you washed your clothes, and not to stray from where you left him.

When you saw that giant thing giving your son chase, you dispatched it with your chainsaw. It wasn’t the first time you’d done something of the sort.

“I will always do my best to keep you safe, Kankri, but one day, you’ll have to know how to protect yourself, how to tread carefully.”

“Yes, Mama.)

You couldn’t protect him from this.

You watch as his strength leaves him, his back covered in deep criss-crossing lacerations, and his blood all over the floor of the platform. The only thing keeping him in an upright position are the blazing irons holding his wrists in place.

“Kankri!” you shout, as his voice loses its vehement momentum. “Kankri, please!”

You don’t know what you’re asking of him. You never will.

And he’s too far gone to hear you calling for him.

An archeradictor shoots a single arrow into him. He lets out yet another tortured wail, louder than the others. You are no stranger to blood by any means, but you faint, nevertheless.

* * *

**_xiii. i no longer strive to strive towards such things_ **

Maybe a sweep or two after Mindfang purchases you, your mind starts wandering back to the past more than it used to. It always does when the present and the future hurt too much. At this point, if someone asked you the date, you’d merely blink, because you haven’t the slightest idea. 

Why exist here, when you can exist inside your own head, where things hurt, but they’re things you’ve already seen? Your knowledge of the outcomes makes the tragedy easier to swallow

The past is idyllic and full of promises, even if those promises died a painful death. The present is a hushed, deep inhale before a calamity. The future is terrifying in its uncertainty.

You think of Kankri. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.

You watched Kankri’s first speeches warily, but also with a certain amount of pride. Even for a wiggler, he had a way with words, a knack for making trolls listen to what he had to say. Yes, he could be long-winded - okay, he was usually long-winded - but he grew out of it for the most part.

He could always put a smile on your face, at least when he and Mituna weren’t shouting at each other while you were trying to sleep. Unlike you, who got so used to it that you learned to ignore them, Meulin hissed at them to cram a sock in it pretty much every day.

You miss Kankri so much. You miss everyone so much.

You wish the doors to your quarters of your owner’s ship didn’t lock from the outside.

You wish you could find a way to the deck and jump over the side, because you can’t swim, and it would only be a matter of time before you got pulled under permanently.

It’s better than having a troll searching, invading, controlling your thinkpan.

* * *

_**xiv. the desert in the garden the garden in the desert** _

Sometimes you wake up in another part of the ship, in an ornately decorated area, with no tunic covering your body, and no idea how you came to be there. You think it over, and shudder until you feel like you could shatter into a million pieces.

Then, the azure haze creeps into your mind, and you…

Just acquiesce, Porrim. Path of least resistance. Part of you wants to acquiesce. And another part of you enjoys it, and that’s the worst realization of all.

Mindfang looks you over.

“You will do exactly as I say, understand?”

“As you wish, Marquise.”

“Call me Aranea,” she says. “That’s my name. I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other, right?”

“As you wish, Aranea.”

You’d never admit this, but sometimes you nearly pity her. Maybe it’s because you’re starved for physical contact and she’s the only one providing it. Maybe because underneath her posturing, she’s just this side of pathetic. 

Maybe because she has her moments of kindness, where she’s so nice that it unnerves you at first. You hold onto them like a barkbeast gnawing on a bone. Maybe it’s because she’s been probing and manipulating your thinkpan so much that you can’t differentiate up from down anymore. 

You’re not sure where her desires end and where yours begin. If there’s a real difference between the two anymore.

You deftly unbutton her waistcoat and more besides, and this time, you don’t even have to pretend she’s someone else, like Viulex, Mituna, or Odrena in order do it. You’ve (un)fortunately outgrown that defense mechanism. You don’t cry, either.

Aranea orders you to lie down on the soft platform that she reserves for one thing alone.  

An azure haze begins to fog out your mind. 

 _No,_  you say to yourself.  _Not like this._

You say that to Aranea, and the haze withdraws, leaving you in your right mind, able to remember everything. You will feel very sorry about this later.

You think of Viulex, Odrena, Kankri, Onvali, Mituna, Meulin, Sielya, Iriort, Cronus, Sosyaa, and Syrrma, each of them flashing before your eyes like pictures.

Since you’ve figured out how to compartmentalize these recollections, perhaps Aranea cannot access them. You’d know if she succeeded, because she might taunt you with them.

You wait for the encounter to be over. You shut you eyes, turn your face away, and remember catching fireflies with Mituna. His awful lisp and his unfortunate fangs, and his knack for getting a dozen fireflies to land on him but somehow not catching a single one.

Her bulge is cool and revolting and wrong (get it out get it out get it out get it out of me please someone help me why me make it stop) but all of a sudden, you don’t care. 

You see yourself from outside your body, observing the jadeblood troll shaking on the platform, her eyes wide in desperation, as if you are a spectator, a witness, to this and nothing more.

“Someone should help her,” you think, watching her fight off tears, moving to intervene, remembering that the second duty of an auxiliatrix is to help trolls in need of assistance.

You vaguely wish you at least had a handkerchief in your sylladex to give to her, but you don’t. You never do.

So you stand there and watch, still, blank, detached. Your ability to feel anything has evaporated.

Then, without prelude or warning, you slam back into yourself, and think that you preferred it when you were just watching it happen. 

You wish you could gray out all the time. 

And when Aranea’s finished, you exhale slowly, lie on your back, hoping she never figures out how to enter the part of your thinkpan that enables you to keep going each night. If she twisted your most sacred memories to suit her own agenda, you’d definitely find a way to self cull.

Because, those memories? They’re only things you have left of everyone you’ve ever loved.

* * *

**_xv.  in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices_ **

You lose track of time in this place, but the increasing amount of gray in your hair suggests that it’s been quite a few sweeps. Fifteen, maybe. No, probably more. Twenty? You have no clue.

One evening, as you gaze at yourself in her mirror, Aranea dashes back into her quarters, which you have been sharing with her for the last five sweeps.

“I want you dressed in ten minutes,” she says, handing you a black sheath dress embroidered in green. “My kismesis, his ship is nearby. Since you are my matesprit and all, I want you to look your best.”

You have no idea when you became her matesprit, when halfassed pity turned to genuine pity, and really, you don’t care. You put on the dress, which fits nicely. You turn to assess your reflection. You look almost pretty, the dress showing off your ink.

Almost, aside from the fact that you look so tired that no amount of sleep could help your condition. You remove makeup from your sylladex and put it on. Maybe that will make you seem less exhausted.

As soon as you reach the deck, Aranea maybe a pace ahead of you, you catch sight of a familiar ship.

* * *

**_xvi.  i do not hope to turn again_ **

Once, when you, Mituna, Meulin, and Kankri were on the run (as usual), you managed to reach the sea. And some ornery wader douche of an Orphaner - Mituna’s words, not yours - offered to hide all of you for a bit, so you'd treat his injured crewmate, all while ignoring the pitch crush Mituna had on him. Meanwhile, Kankri was not fond of him, but Meulin was downright amused by his fondness for swearing.

You ended up considering him a friend, especially when he and his crew helped you out in their own ways. You two developed an understanding.

To be fair, Orphaner Dualscar was pretty easy to dislike on the surface, except when he was being nice, something he did to change things up every now and then. You think you’d be a bit of a jerk too if you had to cull lusii and feed them to some many tentacled harbinger of doom, which is apparently what Orphaners do.

You might have pitied him if you’d stayed longer, this troll trapped in thankless but necessary solitude.

Here, now, with most of your wits about you, your mind bereft of azure fog, you privately think that he could have done a lot better for a kismesis than Aranea.

“Look what I have, Cronus,” Aranea calls to him. “This is my matesprit, and we've been such for sweeps. Isn’t she the most beautiful creature?”

As always, in the end, you are a thing, an object.

Cronus tells his one of his crewmates to guard his ship and not to let anything happen to it - under penalty of death if they fuck that instruction up - while he makes his way onto Aranea’s ship.

“Just when I think you can sink no lower,” he begins. “You take a shovel and start digging to the center of Alternia.”

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Aranea asks. “Admit it.”

Cronus shakes his head in disgust.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” he asks.

“Pitch for you too.”

Aranea pulls you into a passionate kiss, one you return eagerly, for all the azure haze quieting your opposition to the gesture. 

But you don’t want to be put on display like this. You don’t want to be part of some highblood power play. You don't think you do, anyway. You're not sure.

Then, Aranea turns her head to smirk right at Cronus.

You think you’d have grown accustomed to Aranea’s unique interpretation of the flushed quadrant over the sweeps, and sometimes you can let your mind gray out, but not always.

When she pulls away, you bow your head so you don’t have to look directly at either of them. You stand there, and weep silently. What’s the point in talking? What’s the point of of arguing? It’s not like anyone will bother to listen to you.

The cavern jades who remember you would be shocked to see you now. The once strident Porrim Maryam, who shouted at Elders, sang to grubs when the whim struck her, gossiped about any and everything, and laughed freely, well, you’re not her anymore. You don’t know what or what you are, quite.

You are something else.

You don’t dare to look anyone in the eye. You’ve long stopped objecting aloud to the way you’re being treated. The path of least resistance is to stay quiet, and you, Porrim, have become a lady of silences.

Cronus gazes at you and shakes his head, all his words toward Aranea dripping with contempt. He takes one step forward, his heavy boots thudding against the deck. He equips two things. A handkerchief, and Ahab’s Crosshairs.

(You remember Cronus trying to teach Kankri to shoot the damn thing, and the recoil causing Kankri to fly back several feet and fall over. While Mituna cackled in the background, and Meulin did her best not to laugh, you and Cronus checked him for injuries.)

* * *

**_xvii. dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying_ **

He aims his weapon, and for a second, you think he’s going to shoot Aranea. You wouldn’t exactly hold it against him.

He wouldn’t go through with that, though. That would be akin to painting a target sign on his back as far as Aranea’s allies are concerned. An eye for an eye. That’s how it goes. Besides he’s not quite aiming for her, anyway.

At that point, you finally understand his plan.

You smile, bright, genuine, and resolute.

You stare him straight in the eye, and nod. 

He lowers his gaze for a moment.

“Auxiliatrix,” he says stiffly. 

Then, he lets the facade drop. He hands you his handkerchief, letting you wipe your eyes and face with it.

You nod at him.

“Thank you,” you say in Vindemiatrix. 

Though he doesn’t speak it, he appears to get what you’re trying to articulate.

He clasps your hands, lets them drop, and apologizes.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” you tell him, wishing you could slow time and pap him for a while. He carries so much anguish for a single troll.

“Do you know the things I’ve done?”

“All things serve the First Mother, even this." You’re not going to cry. You actually want to grin. “Cronus, please.”

He raises his weapon. You close your eyes.

He fires straight at you, and Ahab’s Crosshairs strike their target true as always. 

You drop to the floor, letting out a low whine of pain, your hand instinctively moving to your abdomen, to the source of your injury.

You lift your hand to examine your hand, and it’s saturated with blood. When you laugh - why are you laughing, are you really that panrotted? - some of blood bubbles up at the corners of your mouth, running down to your chin and to the planks of the deck. Green blood mixing in with saltwater. You keep laughing.

You can’t stop.  _You’re free. You’re free._ You can’t figure out whether you’re laughing or crying at the moment. You don’t even know that you’re crying until Cronus hovers over you, touches your face, and shooshes you gently.

* * *

_**xviii. fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair** _

The world dims. A verdant puddle pools around you.

“What have you done?” Aranea asks.

Cronus slicks his hair back with one hand, and laughs at her.

It is a sound utterly devoid of mirth or joy.

“My good duty for the sweep, I figure. Fuck you, Serket.”

That’s when he takes his leave.

Aranea swears up and down that she’ll find a way to fix you if it’s the last thing she ever does. She’s crying loudly, tears rolling down her face, swearing vengeance on Cronus.

You’ve never seen her cry before, and you’ve been with her for more time you can count easily.

“Porrim? Stay with me,” she says. “Please? Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me all alone.”

She subsequently realizes something.

“Wait! You’re a rainbow drinker. You can survive this!”

You don’t particularly want to enable yourself to glow. You don’t want to spend another eighteen sweeps with her.

She lies down next you, and makes the same request a second time, tilting your head so you can see her.

“Porrim, I–”

But your mind’s starting to leave your body behind.

* * *

**_xix. redeem the unread vision in the higher dream_ **

You close your eyes, and yet you can still see a figure before you. A male troll, eyes blank and white as eternity, with nubby little horns, sits, cross-legged beside you. You stare up at him in utter disbelief. You have no idea what’s going on, because he shouldn’t be here. He’s been dead for nearly twenty sweeps. 

You don’t think Aranea can see him, otherwise she’d demand to know who he is and what the fuck he’s doing on her ship.

“My son,” you murmur. “You came back for me.”

“I will always come back for you, Mama.”

He loops his arm in yours, and starts to glide in the air easily, as if he knows where to go by heart. He refuses to let go of you, which is just as well, because you refuse to let go of him. You’re scared he’ll disappear.

“Where are we going?” you want to know.

“A place where nothing hurts. Don’t worry. No matter what, I’ll protect you.”

You want to protest that you’re supposed to be the one protecting him, that you failed to protect him, but you’re so glad to see him that all you do is kiss his forehead. He’s got a bit of dirt on his face. You take out the handkerchief Cronus gave you, and scrub it off.

“I missed you,” he tells you, finally.

“Me too. I missed you so much.

“Together again, Mama.”

Later, you will feel a twinge of despair about everything and everyone, but not at the moment. 

Kankri is right here, looking slightly younger than he did when you last saw him. 

“Yes, yes, we are. It’s been long enough, hasn’t it?” you reply.

You let Kankri lead you forward by your hand. He knows the way to this unknown destination, the location of which you cannot even guess.

As you keep walking, for the first time in many sweeps, you begin to sing. Your voice isn’t what it used to be. You are not who you used to be. Nevertheless, you persist, your song issuing in lilting Vindemiatrix.

* * *

 **I was neither**  
**Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,**  
**Looking into the heart of light, the silence.**  
_\- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land_


End file.
